5 Things to Know About Buying Cheap DDR4 RAM

$15–25 is the sweet spot for an 8GB DDR4 stick from a reputable brand like Crucial, Kingston, or Corsair. Anything over $30 is a rip-off.

All major brands use the same memory chips from Samsung, SK Hynix, or Micron. You don’t need “gaming” RAM or RGB lighting.

A plain stick with a heat spreader is fine. Heat spreaders are mostly cosmetic at DDR4 speeds.

Check your motherboard’s max supported speed (usually 2666, 3200, or 3600 MHz) and buy that. If adding to existing RAM, match speed and timing if possible.

Mixing brands is fine. Worst case, the system runs everything at the slower stick’s speed. Don’t overthink it — this isn’t where you get performance gains.